Tag: personal time off

The Frustration Continues

I am starting to wonder if this particular contractor just likes our house or something and wants to keep coming over. I’m kidding, of course, but sheesh.

The project that was supposed to happen today uncovered an issue that required us to push to another day as well as make some changes before it can happen. Which means we’re going to have to schedule another day for them to come back once they find the parts they need. It’s routine maintenance that just never seems to end, somehow.

Insert yet another frustrated sigh here.

On the plus side, since I’m only working half a day today, my work day only has two hours and 12 minutes remaining instead of six hours and 42 minutes. Nice.

Bed Time

It’s 10:00pm and I am going to bed.

Tomorrow is a vacation day and I am planning to spend as much time as I can working on the RPM Challenge. Call it a music day. There will be singing, there will be guitar playing, there will be music and lyric writing, and there may even be some saxophone playing. A crazy day is in store.

For now though… I’m dead on my feet. It’s time for bed.

It Is Official

It is official… I am on vacation.

Oh glorious glory, I am on vacation.

Six business days without having to go to work and do business. Ecstasy at its finest.

In less then 48 hours I will be in Florida where it is not 24 degrees out. It is just too amazing to be real. Warmth in January. Pretty please.

It is Time

Yup. It’s time. What time? Too-close-to-vacation-to-concentrate-on-anything-else time.

One work day left. At 5:30pm tomorrow (about 21 hours from now) I will punch out of work and be on vacation for more than a week. I’m on PTO all of next week and the following Monday. Six business days.

I just have to get through that one final work day and then I will be out out out and I can’t wait. Also, I can’t focus on anything else. The flight to Florida is Sunday before dawn. At this moment in time, on Thursday night, I am literally watching Disney travel videos on YouTube. This one is about finding hidden perks when staying at the resorts.

Let’s go now. I mean, the hell with responsibilities, let’s just leave now!

2.5 Hours to Go

The countdown to the end of the work day and the start of my long weekend continues. I was pulled into a meeting for the stretch of time that I was planning to have lunch so I had to delay my break for an hour. It’s 3:00pm now and I am just wrapping up my lunch. My stomach has been okay for most of the day, though I’ve twice been hit with empty stomach hunger pains. The second time was at 11:00am while I was in a (different) meeting and it was pretty uncomfortable. A protein bar and some sugar free chocolate at 11:30 put me right. I’m optimistic that I had enough lunch to hold off any further issues until I get home. Cross those fingers, kids.

For the third day in a row I am trying to get through the day while dealing with feelings of exhaustion. Why? I got a decent night’s sleep last night. I should feel better today than I did yesterday or the day before, right? Nope. I am super tired once again. Last night at about 9:00pm I could barely keep my eyes open. Then, magically, by 10:00 I was wide awake. I was able to get to sleep by 11:00 though so I thought it would be okay. Today I’ve just been wiped out all day. If this comes up again tomorrow I might actually take a nap. Wouldn’t that be fun? I mean, I am old so of course it would be fun. The older you get the more that a good solid nap is a thrill ride. Bring it on, people!

Okay. Back to work. I have a meeting in 18 minutes, and a long weekend two hours after that. Power through, Robert!

Eight Hours to Go

The title of the post says eight hours but it is really eight hours and 13 minutes, give or take a few seconds.

Long weekend approaching. Prepare for the arrival of a long weekend.

I am so tired today. I slept for six hours last night. I was hoping I would feel better than I feel right now. I’m exhausted and I haven’t done anything yet. I’m sitting at my desk in the office fantasizing about going home and taking a nap. It is going to be a long day, I can feel it.

The weather forecast says the sun might come out mid-morning tomorrow. Could that be enough to get me out of the house and into the city for a little photo-walk? Probably not, but maybe. Just maybe. I want to take some photos and I want at least some of them to be on film. We’ll see.

Apart from that, and needing to get a car inspected, I am hoping my long weekend will be a musical one. I am hoping for lots of recording and guitar playing. All I have to do is get through the work day today. Eight hours and eight minutes to go.

314/365
314/365

Errands Day

Just running errands and doing chores today. Keeping busy over all. I really wanted to take the cameras out for a walk this morning, but the weather was awful. The light was the worst ever. So disheartening. Oh well.

After a couple of days of weirdness, my stomach has been a team player today. No issues at all. I’m proud of the little surgically altered guy. It did not wake me up last night, which was nice of it. My legs are another story though. Twice overnight I woke up with bad leg cramps. It’s always something when you’re an old fart like me. All I want is to sleep and my own body is stopping me from doing it. What a jerk I am to myself.

Before I get back to the housework, I think I am going to finally put in a vacation request at work for our staycation in September and our next trip back to Disney World in January. I think it’s time, don’t you? There. I just did it. Hopefully my boss doesn’t have a heart attack when he sees two week long vacation requests at once. They are spread out. It’s okay. I’ll wait a while before I put in for the second planned Disney trip. That’s a full year away.

The Red Sox winning streak ended last night. They played Cincinnati, who are pretty terrible this year, and lost. It made me sad. Here’s hoping for vengeance in today’s game. I want to win by 90, at least.

Okay. Back to work, red head.

Personal Time

My company gives us all 16 hours of personal time each year. They also give us weeks upon weeks of vacation time. The difference is that the personal time is meant to be used in small chunks at short notice, while the vacation time, which they don’t actually call vacation time, can only be used in four or eight hour chunks per day and is supposed to be booked in advance. The other difference is that vacation time can be carried over from this year to next year if needed while the personal time disappears on January 1st.

What does all of this mean? I had five hours of personal time left in the bank and I used it all up today. Robbie will not be having any time vanish on January 1st this year. I started my weekend five hours early, babie!

How did I celebrate this happy surprise of a half day? I ate my lunch too fast and made myself gastric bypass sick, that’s how! Yes! Well played, Robert the putz! I had a hamburger again to have another test of the sugar free ketchup. Yes, it does taste like ketchup and no, it is not disgusting! What a treat! It was such a treat that I ate way too much per bite and plowed through it all way too fast and got something stuck in my stomach tract and had a full on case of the foamies.

I am better now that a couple of hours have gone past. I’m okay!

Happy weekend plus five hours of personal time, everyone! WOOHOO!

Three Hours to Go

Three hours left in the work week.

180 minutes.

10800 seconds.

It’s a long weekend for me too. The company I work for puts a cap on how much personal time you can accrue and as your bank builds up you have to take time off to stay below the cap. It’s not as bad as the Boston Bruins salary cap woes right now, but it will get there if I don’t use time regularly. Because of that, I took two days off next week. Monday and Tuesday. That all means that ol’ Robbie has himself a four day weekend coming up.

Sadly, Jen was not able to take the two days off too, so that means I am on my own for the second half of my super long weekend. That means there will be lots of personal creative project type stuff. I checked the weather at the ocean for the next few days and both Sunday and Monday are looking like good candidates for sunrise photos. At least one of those mornings will be Photography Day where I will grab some sunrise at the beach and then hit a few places on the way home. Film and Digital. Bank on it (weather permitting).

There will also be a lot of music. As much as I can stomach. I plan on making gigantic progress on the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. That includes guitar tracking, vocal tracking in the car (because I have a weird mental block that won’t let me sing when people can hear me unless I am playing guitar with a very loud band), and mixing songs as I finish recording them.

There will also be progress on the current Doctor Who series binge watches. I finished season one of the original show this morning, and I am almost done with season four of the current show. So very many more seasons of each show to go. Progress will be made. I fully expect to move from the 10th doctor to the 11th doctor in the new show but I expect to still be on the first doctor in the old show. Like I said… so much Who to watch.

I am also thinking that I will be back on the couch to 5k wagon next week. It’s been a couple of weeks since I stopped. I want to get back into it, even though I am very doubtful I will ever run that mythical 5k. It’s still a goal, I just don’t know if it’s an achievable goal for me.

I have two days off booked in August too. They are for a weekend trip to Maine for a wedding. Bellana will be joining us for that and I expect lots of photos from Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor. Again, film and digital. That include Cadillac Mountain, which is the first spot in the continental United States that sees the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. It would require a SUPER early wake up to see, but I want very much to see it and photograph it. Now that I think of it, I should replace my broken tripod before we leave for that trip. The broken guy is good enough for this weekend, but for Cadillac Mountain? I’m going to need something that works. I’ll take care of it.

Okay, my late lunch break is over now. Time to get back to work and finish off this work week on a high note.

Happy Monday

Happy Monday, everyone (he said sarcastically).

Last night got strange. There was a small health issue that we all knew was nothing, but on the day after the vaccine it might have been something so we went to the ER and had them tell us it was nothing. The zaniest thing about the ER trip is that we got there at 10:00 and left at 12:00. Two hours? That’s it? Amazing!

So I was late getting to bed last night. I was probably going to be late anyway, thanks to television. I was sitting in bed watching The Walking Dead on my iPad when we decided to go. Live TV, babie! I was planning on watching the episode and then trying to sneak in House of the Dragon before I fell asleep. I am pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen. I was still seriously beat on post-vaccine day. I was going to try it though. Instead, I went to sleep a little before 1:00am and woke up a little before 7:00. My SleepWatch numbers were good. I feel so much better today. The only post-vaccine symptom left is a very sore left arm. That’ll clear soon enough.

So I watched last night’s The Walking Dead while doing my walkies (38 minutes, 3.22 miles [simulated], 609 calories). The episode was pretty good. The stuff with Daryl and Judith was excellent. Look at me getting all emotional about the parenting stuff. Who woulda thunk it? The wrestling stuff though… what the fuck, Angela. It was bad when Fear the Walking Dead had a wrestling episode, but the main show? It was just friggin’ embarrassing. It was probably about one minute long but it felt like two hours. Just stop.

House of the Dragon (aka Hot D) will have to wait until tonight. I thought I had a doctors appointment this week, on October 12, but it’s actually next week on the 18th. October 12th is Bruins opening day. Another thing that will wait until later tonight is the finalization of the Bruins opening day roster. They waived three veterans yesterday. Will they be picked up today? Will they be sent down to Providence? Will they be cut completely? Will they remain with the team? Who the hell knows.

In past years, today would have been a day off work for me. Columbus Day, aka whatever people are calling the day instead of Columbus Day because Columbus was a pretty atrocious person who really shouldn’t be celebrated, especially since his great discovery was the result of him being a bit of an idiot. At the start of 2022 our holiday structure was altered to change non-national holidays, like today, into floating holidays. So I don’t have today off, but I can take a day off later in its place. Jen is off today though. I should have put in for today so that we could spend the day together. Three day weekends kinda rule. I think I need to use two days this month again to stop my personal time off accrual from maxing out, again. We’ll see.

There you go, folks. That’s my Monday morning. Happy Monday.